The Official Merger of Big Business and Organized Crime

Today’s epiphanal fare includes the worlds of Big Business and Organized Crime. Besides the fact that one of these moneymaking machines is relatively illegal, they have a lot in common: Both have greedy owners, unscrupulous tactics, and a casual disregard for human life. With so many similarities, it seemed only natural to propose a big-time merger between these two beloved institutions.

A Win-Win Situation

For a merger to succeed, it must be a win-win situation. This merger fits the bill on multiple levels.

For Big Business, this would be a PR coup. Corporate America can’t win under our current system. From the days of the Enron implosion to the more recent too-big-to-fail financial fireballs, Big Business is always getting skewered by the media, their investors, and grumpy old taxpayers.

Organized Crime doesn’t have that problem. In fact, America loves Organized Crime. The Godfather sequel is a classic, the Sopranos have a huge following, and who wouldn’t want to do shots with Al Capone (whiskey, not lead). This adulation occurs because crime bosses aren’t shy about showing their true colors. Whereas your corporate CEO is a money-grubbing jerk-off who hides behind legions of lawyers and accountants, the crime boss comes right out with his tough talk and his promise to break your frickin’ neck if you don’t cooperate. Plus they blow stuff up, which is a huge bonus.

Big Business could also benefit from Organized Crime’s approach to efficiency. You want to downsize? With just a few drive-by shootings, companies could dramatically slash their workforces, and not have to worry about unemployment insurance. And performance problems? There wouldn’t be any performance problems if your pay got docked and your thumbs got broken.

Finally, Big Business could eliminate advertising. Picture a few heavies in the grocery store, holding rolls of toilet paper and calling out to passing shoppers, “Hey lady, you really want to buy this brand, if you know what I mean.”

Organized Crime wins big too. They get to drop the whole money laundering scheme and just employ a million tax attorneys and accountants to exploit, challenge and cheat the ridiculously complex IRS tax system.

Ironically, I believed the IRS would approve of this, as this sudden influx of this previously “off the books” business would require an immense expansion of the government agency. If you’re going to write off ammo and automatic weapons, you need a team of auditors to make sure people are filling out the proper tax forms.

Making the Merger Go

Once I had this ingenious concept in place, I called the heads of America’s most powerful corporations and the leaders of some of the most feared criminal organizations. I floated out the epiphany, and, not surprisingly, they loved the idea.

We managed to slide the merger through the legal system without too much wrangling. Because elected officials have long been financially beholden to big business and organized crime (try to win an election without these guys in your corner), they were able to rewrite a few of the peskier laws. The merger was allowed.

Things went smoothly for a while, and the merger’s benefits reached far and wide. America’s productivity had increased by leaps and bounds. There was also a dramatic slashing of personnel in the Justice Department, as many of Organized Crime’s former “strong-arm tactics” were reclassified as “best practices.”

Unfortunately, the merger failed because, of all things, a difference in semantics.

It seemed that the merged entities of Kraft Foods and the Tortolli Family were looking to acquire Viacom and the Bennata Family. The Tortollis felt that the asking price was too high, and Kraft’s accountants responded by saying, “Perhaps we need to engineer a hostile takeover.”

The Tortolli family misinterpreted the strategy, and at the next Viacom/Bennata Family board meeting, all the execs got capped.

Wall Street didn’t approve of the fact that there was a bloodshed (they prefer shareholder votes on the matter), and the company’s stock price tanked. But the violence didn’t stop there. The hit inspired retaliatory measures, and soon corporate CEO’s heads were exploding everywhere.

While this made for good reading in the newspaper’s business section, but it definitely didn’t sit well with a group even more powerful than big business or the mob. And guess who that would be?

Moms.

Stating that cold-blooded murder did not send a positive message to the nation’s youth, a group of concerned mothers started making calls to CEOs and crime bosses, and gave them a piece of their maternal minds. Besides tying up customer service lines, they also boycotted products.

Some even fought fire with fire. In Wisconsin, one the heavies at the supermarket tried pushing some toilet paper on an eighty-five year old grandma. She surprised him by pulling out a handgun and gunning him down in aisle 8. Thanks to our concealed-carry laws, she was armed and ready for retaliatory measures.

It soon became apparent that my brilliant epiphany was doomed. Curtailed by the consumers, Big Business and Organized Crime scrapped the mergers and went back to their ways of old. Once again, they’re breaking laws and kneecaps, respectively.

No worries. Now I’m onto my next merger. I’m currently negotiating with Las Vegas and the Catholic Church. It looks like a natural fit. I mean, who doesn’t pray to God when you put it all on red?